Bush, Obama and the Gaza Blitz
Unwilling to control its fighters, who fired scores of missiles into Israel at the end of their six-month ceasefire, Hamas gave Israel the provocation it needed to deliver a savage blow to the Palestinian enclave in Gaza.
Saturday was the bloodiest day in the history of the Palestinian people since being driven from their homes in the War of 1948. One thousand were killed or wounded, as the Israeli Air Force conducted over a hundred strikes—on graduation ceremonies for Hamas fighters, police stations and storage sites for rockets.
About Israel's right and duty to defend its border towns, there is no dispute. When Hamas permits Gaza to be used as a launch pad for rockets, it must expect retaliation. Nor can Hamas claim some right to dictate the limits of that retaliation.
Yet the wisdom of so savage a retribution for rockets that killed not one Israeli is open to question. And crass Israeli politics seems to be behind this premeditated and planned blitz.
With Likud's hawkish "Bibi" Netanyahu ahead in the polls for the Feb. 10 election, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Labor's candidate, had to show that he, too, could be ruthless with Hamas.
Kadima Party candidate and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has an even greater need than the highly decorated Barak to show toughness. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, departing in scandal, wants to exit in a blaze of glory, to blot out the memory of a botched war against Hezbollah that he launched in the summer of 2006.
However, while Israel's politicians all seem to have a stake in these devastating strikes, Israel herself will pay the price.
Given the casualty toll, over 300 dead and 1,300 wounded as of this writing, Hamas will have to exact its pound of flesh. The Hamas wing that seeks renewed war with Israel will now shout into silence the wing working with Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak on a new ceasefire.
The moderate Palestinian Mahmoud Abbas, who has been talking to Israel, testifying to her good faith, has been made to appear the puppet and fool. A new intifada spreading to the West Bank, with suicide attacks inside Israel, is now possible.
Moderate Arabs, who have recognized Israel or backed peace, will now be seen by the Arab street as appeasers impotent to stop the public suffering of the Palestinian people.
As for President Bush's hopes of midwifing a peace that would create a Palestinian state, they are as dead as the Annapolis process he set in train. In advancing peace in the Middle East, Bush's eight-year record is now a near-absolute failure.
For four years, Bush refused to talk to Yasir Arafat, though Bill Clinton had negotiated with him, as had four Israeli prime ministers, two of who shared a Nobel Prize with Arafat. In his second term, Bush, after insisting Hamas be included in free elections in Palestine, refused to recognize Hamas when it won those elections.
Arafat was a terrorist and Hamas is a terrorist organization, declared Bush, and we don't negotiate with terrorists. Yet, Bush de-listed Libya as a state sponsor of terror and sent Condi Rice to chat up Col. Gadhafi, though Gadhafi still has on his hands the blood of scores of American school kids from the Lockerbie massacre of 1989 that Libya and Gadhafi engineered.
For eight years, like the "dummy" in a hand of bridge, Bush has sat mute as his Israeli partner, Sharon or Olmert, played America's cards as well as their own. The Bush response to Saturday's carnage, as anticipated, was to blame Hamas for causing it and urge Israelis to be careful about civilian casualties as they go about their reprisals.
Whatever Israel decides, we support. For eight years that has been the most reliable guide to U.S. Middle East policy.
And Barack Obama? Forty-eight hours after the Israeli blitz began, he and his national security team remain silent.
Hopefully, Obama will bring with him a new Mideast policy, one made in the U.S.A., for the U.S.A. Hopefully, just as Israel has its private links to Syria through Turkey, to Hamas through Egypt and to Hezbollah, Obama will establish independent U.S. channels to all three, and adopt a separate U.S. policy toward all three, as Israel does.
While the United States must support Israel's right to defend her towns and to strike bases from which Israelis are being attacked, Obama should denounce the collective punishment of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, by Israel's cutting off their electricity in the dead of winter and denying them the food and medicine many need to survive.
For us to remain silent in the face of this comports neither with our interests or our values. Israel's policy of withholding from the weak and innocent of Gaza, women and children, the necessities of life, to punish the guilty who rule at the point of a gun, is a policy that Obama should declare the United States will no longer support with tax dollars.
COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
Entries(RSS)
"While the United States must support Israel’s right to defend her towns and to strike bases from which Israelis are being attacked, Obama should denounce the collective punishment of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, by Israel’s cutting off their electricity in the dead of winter and denying them the food and medicine many need to survive."
But first, Obama needs to clean out the Clintonite goons from his administration, the relics of a regime whose spokespeople argued that it was "worth it" to let 500,000 Iraqi children die as a result of our sanctions conceived to build opposition to a former ally.
There is no room for decency in modern politics. I don't know why anyone writes about it anymore.
The problem with Hamas and Hezbollah and their ilk will remain so long as Israel plays by its enemies rules and hits back with tit- for-tat raids. It is well on its way to total exhaustion and loss of will for even for minimal retaliation. Already today, after but a few days of nervous bombing, the cabinet is putting out feelers to Hamas for a ceasefire. What is needed to change the dynamic of the Middle East is what will not happen: a massive miltiary shock, one of stupendous scale by Israel, unlike anything seen before including 1967, and sustained over time. Israel should clean out the pigsty that is Lebanon once and for all, purify it, annihilate Hezbollah. It should reoccupy Gaza, hunt down and kill every terrorist befouling the land. Let the Europeans and the Americans scream and bray. Intractability and implacability would rewarded, for the Left fawns over and worships power and brute force above all things, and Israel could silence it with enough ruthlessness. But alas, the Israeli government has not the belly for this, and it is why Israel will be engaged for decades in fighting the long defeat. At the current rate, in a hundred years' time Palestine will again be what it was in the 1930s, with a few Jews living in Arab-controlled lands and subjected to pogroms every now and again. All the rest will have emigrated. The jihadists have known since before Oslo that Israel is psychologically spent, unable any longer to face the demographic arithmetic. It lacks self-confidence as a nation, is morally exhausted. I find it very sad that a country which was once so vibrant and creative and exciting an idea is coming to the end of its tether, being destroyed by mindless savages.
John Q. Reb @ 2
Are you the same "John Q. Reb" who expressed revulsion against the brutal and bloody suppression of the Cathar heresy in Languedoc on another discussion thread at this site?
Just asking.
# 3
War for legitimate self defense and survival is a lot different than genocide. I've seen war up close, served two tours in Vietnam, and I can tell you that there is a big difference between killing soldiers on the battlefield and seeing barbarians disembowel women and children in order to inspire terror and subdue populations.
#4
Something tells me a campaign of "massive miltiary shock, one of stupendous scale by Israel, unlike anything seen before including 1967, and sustained over time" would ultimately entail more than just "killing soldiers on the battlefield."
"Surgical" warfare in this environment? Right.
The Israelis have the right to defend themselves, just like everybody else. But causing massive civilian and non-combatant casualties is "Expressly against the laws of arms," as someone says in Shakespeare's Henry V, referring to the killing of unarmed baggage-train boys.
But why should anyone bother to read Shakespeare, when we have the wonderful and uplifting example of the U.S. and Britain in World War II to guide us?
I think, with the downturn in the global economy, Israel is simply ratcheting things up to short circuit any talk in the US about reducing our flow of cash to them. I think militarism is a growth industry for them.
Please notice, also, anytime something happens elsewhere in the world, Israel will cause a commotion so that the world's attention is not diverted for too long.
Rooting for the overdog:
http://www.dixienet.org/rebellion/2008/12/rooting-for-overdog.html
Do the native Palestinians have a right to defend themselves against invasion and genocide?
Where the Palestinians using Grad rockets like Georgians?
What about disproportionate use of force?
I wonder what effect this will have on the Iraqi government. If there criticism is to harsh then they will be chastised by the US and if it is soft they will be called US puppets.
Obama’s silence doesn’t help.
"I wonder what effect this will have on the Iraqi government. If their criticism is to harsh then they will be chastised by the US and if it is soft they will be called US puppets.
Obama’s silence doesn’t help."
These are wise words spoken about the Middle East. Except of course Obama's silence does help him because if his criticism is too harsh he will invite ridicule from his new Cabinet, if it is too soft it will make matters worse for him in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. I suspect he will do what the Clintons did and show his respect for Muslims by bombing Christians in Serbia and his respect for Christians by more "affirmative actions" at home for the poor, young pregant women and more taxes to sustain the whole charade.
"Unwilling to control its fighters, who fired scores of missiles into Israel at the end of their six-month ceasefire, Hamas gave Israel the provocation it needed to deliver a savage blow to the Palestinian enclave in Gaza."
Other sources disagree with Mr. Buchanan's statement. First, a report by Professor Richard Falk, United Nations Special Investigator for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, wrote, among other violations by Israel, that "Israel has also ignored recent Hamas' diplomatic initiatives to re-establish the truce or ceasefire since its expiry on December 26." Why did Israel ignore these diplomatic initiatives?
Second, in a December 29 article at the LewRockwell website, Joshua Frank declared that it wasn't Hamas that broke the six-month truce. Frank quotes a press release put out by Gush Shalom, an Israeli peace group, that "'The escalation towards war could, and should, have been avoided. It was the State of Israel which broke the truce, in the "ticking tunnel" raid...two months ago....Since then, the army went on stoking the fires of escalation with calculated raids and killings, whenver the shooting of missiles on israel decreased.'"
The "ticking tunnel" raid refers to an Israeli missile attack on Gaza on the night of the U.S. presidential election. They believed Hamas was constructing a tunnel through which to kidnap Israeli soldiers. Over the past six weeks dozens of Palestinians have been killed. Of course, the death rate has skyrocketed since the air raids on Gaza began since December 26.
This is just another horrible example of the cruel injustice being imposed upon the Palestinian people ever since 1947-48; and, the U.S. government has supported it since then. Nevertheless, we still blithely wonder why the Muslims hate us. Again, I ask, of what benefit is the alliance with Israel to America?
which 'native palestinians' pch? Like the white-skinned Bosnian nazi ones that came to join the failed jihad of 1948? Or the ones that moved to the region to partake of the economy and technology gains made by Israel?
How about we ship them all to kosovo, let them continue their jihad against Serbia, and I can post some lies and say how badly the poor native jihadists are being oppressed?
Next thing you know and they will be saying how the native Palestinian Christians make lampshades out of Jewish babies?
When you torture and murder so many millions in our Holy Land and the Serbian heartland, tyour tales about how the victims "deserved it" grow bigger and bigger.
Do the native Palestinan Christians have a right to defend themselves?
Do the native Serbian Christians have a right to defend themselves?
When will the white genocide end?
pch,
Your post 15 makes no sense to me. Palestinian Christians have every right to defend themselves. See what they are up against:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/023936.php
Now the question is: why does the irrational Jewhate of some people blind them to the fact that hamas and fatah are nazi movements, human rights denying movements?
Leaving religion out of things completely, there are two kinds of societal movements:
1) those that spread human rights
2) those that deny and quash human rights (which are goals of ruling elites)
Zionism is '1'. Islamism is '2'. When people lie about, and attack type 1, they are cheering for type 2. Why? makes no sense to me.
Why would anyone opposed to the kla support their brethren in palestine, who are actually residing on land given to the Jews in the 1920s--and this land was EARNED. How? via 2000 years of bloodshed. Jews have earned and redeemed our land every bit as much as the various Muslim countries that were formed after the fall of the Ottoman empire.
I doubt zionism is about the spread of human rights, no doubt it is a racket for jews and their lackeys (everything becomes a racket so save your outrage). My guess is that zionism eventually circles back around to Jewish end times philosphy where yaweh passes out the franchise to jews to lecture the gentile, plus a return of >10%. Maybe the Chronicles staff could put together an issue on the jews, and their religions/ideologies, doing so respectfully to both jews and those who are intellectually curious as to jewish cultural mindset. Since both zionism and anti-semetism are rackets it is way past time that serious basic questions were asked and the old assumptions sent to the dust bin.
John Q Reb @ 2 & 4; Slim @15: Go to http://www.truthdig.com and access Chris Hedges' reports, particularly his December 29 report titled "Party to Murder". This is exactly what is happening in Gaza. It is cold blooded murder perpetrated by Israeli Zionists (who are nothing more than racists). In this report he tells of the despicable treatment accorded to Professor Richard Falk of the UN, himself a Jew, because he called the Israeli action a crime against humanity.
Simmons,
If zionism is not about human rights,why is it then that the West and 'international community' pressure Israeli leaders to facilitate the spreading of sharia? Why are Israeli leaders pressured to behave like the kapos of WWII?
Mind you, not that Israel is 'perfect'. It has all the flaws one might expect given that her leaders are mostly lackeys of the US, but Israelil society is infinitely less racist than that of the ethnically clean Muslim countries. In Africa, there are even Muslims killing Muslims, where the victims are black and the perpetrators are north African Arabs (lighter skinned). I don't recall the Jews engaging in any skin color based slaughter.
The only Jews that have attacked other Jews are the corrupted pets of the British elites, the ideological ancestors of current Israeli leadership.
Meng,
the only 'crime against humanity' is the widespread support for the nazis of hamas by their historical revisionist Israel hating friends, and the self hating Jews that help them.
Slim, @28: That was a very funny joke; you ought to be on the Jay Leno show.
@18slim
“The only Jews that have attacked other Jews are the corrupted pets of the British elites, the ideological ancestors of current Israeli leadership.”
I'm confused you like Israel but not it's current leadership or is it a political faction in Israeli politics you don’t like.
The only political parties I’m aware of are Likud which I understand is like the Republican Party or Conservative party here in Britain and Kadima which is like the Democrats or Labour Party.
Meng,
There is no post 28, and you are a fantasy-land liar that Goebbels would embrace.
George,
The Israeli parties that are most opposed to nazi policy are the ones slandered as 'right wing', those that support it are 'left wing'. Such is how history is written. Eg: you are probably already familiar with the Serb 'ultranationalist extremists'--who are guilty only of not yielding to US fascism.
Or as Ethan Bronner recently stated in the NYT: the left wing parties support giving up land.
Thus, they support the cleansing of Jews, the giving away of strategic land that MUST be kept for Israel to be safe, and giving this land to unrepentant Islamist nazis.
There are no parties that uphold the Jewish patriotism of Jabotinsky or Bergson (they would be comperable to Mihailovic).
Basically, the EU/NATO/US/EC all collude on a global scale to corrupt Israeli leaders, even when they originally had good intentions. Eg: 'aid' to Israel is nothing more than the big donation from the alumni to the athletic association. It is used to buy Israeli policy, which is largely suicidal.
Even now, Condi is working to rescue hamas: http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/01/02/israel.gaza/index.html
Only our resident big-lie spewers would call the US rescue of hamas 'pro Israel' policy.
In short, there are very, very, few Jewish patriots left, and they tend to be overpowered even when elected. 60 years of big-lie agitprop have lulled many Israelis into accepting suicidal policy.
The current leadership is finally defending Israelis, which is good, but they will not crush hamas, for the allegedly zionist controlled international community will not allow it.
Slim, @21: Thanks for the correction. Still, I am sure you got the message. It really was a funny joke @18.
I voted for Obama and already I have no faith whatsoever that he will do the right thing. Anyone watching this open carnage and responds with "no comment" is a goddam coward - not worthy of being the president of the US. The takeover of the US by the Israel Zionists is complete and Barack Obama is the proof.
Ever notice when Israel launches a military action against one of its neighbors and the international community expresses outrage the world is subjected to a rehash of the holocaust by every Western media outlet.
Truly remarkable!